Well, it’s an impossible question to answer. A lot of it comes down to personal preference. But, in some cases, the difference is stark and obvious.

Many of you may have seen this lovely photo of First Lady Michelle Obama give President George W. Bush a hug at the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the weekend:

An American Rohrschach: If offended from either end of spectrum, you’re an ideologue. If just a moment, maybe not. https://t.co/8i0GEnBQCb

It’s a fascinating look at the differences in stance, emotion, feeling, result. Granted, our assumptions and knowledge of who these people are informs our opinions of the moment (would we feel differently if the two people involved were unknown to us?) but it’s still a very interesting example of the difference that can be had with a video vs a still image.

I love Souza’s photos. Many of them capture a good man doing a very difficult job. I’ve often wondered how much of that impression is because of Souza’s eye vs how much of it is Obama vs how much of it is any human being in the same situation.

Copyright: This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

I was very happy to once again be a Walk Leader for the Scott Kelby 8th Annual Worldwide PhotoWalk. These events are always a lot of fun and the idea of shooting at the same (general) time as thousands of photographers around the world is very cool.

We had about 40 walkers joining me for the walk around Granville Island, one of the more photogenic areas of Vancouver.

While I didn’t shoot as much as I normally would (a large photo walk is like herding cats!), here are some shots from Saturday.

What good looking bunch of shooters!

My favorite face of the day:

One poor lonely shoe. There’s a small child limping around Granville Island right now.

I love the juxtaposition of the text on the left (“participants wanted”) and the young lady on the right *not* participating. 🙂

I was happy to be asked to appear on The Campfire Project podcast with Chris Domico and Matt Dusenbury. In this episode, we had a conversation where we “look at how far photography, and the stories those pictures tell, have come – from specialized service to everyday occurrence.”

I set my Nikon D600 to show me the images I took on the LCD viewfinder only in black and white. Like most things, it takes practice (I shot 500+ photos with only 16 “good enough” to post and only half of those were in B&W) but it was fun and made me think about what I was shooting and the lighting differently.

It will be a long time before I’m anywhere near as good as Tony but I like the exercise.

Went down to Robson St here in Vancouver for the 2014 Vancouver Zombie Walk – some of the zombies were amazing!
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I had a blast going to “Sunday Afternoon Salsa” at Robson Square here in Vancouver to shoot some beautiful people, none more so than my new favourite dancer, Kiana! Here are her favourite shots.
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Dave Hill and crew have put together a behind the scenes documentary video to showcase their latest collaboration with Fiat for a unique four concept ad in Vanity Fair. Watch as they break down the concepts and show you in detail the amount of work and production that went into each image!

I love watching these behind the scenes videos of photo shoots. The work that goes into them is amazing and at a level of photography I will never reach, let alone aspire to.

I typed the title for this article hours ago. After typing it, I spent an hour answering emails, having a snack, watching a little TV, and checking up on friends and family in Israel. For a full hour after all of that, I stared at a blinking cursor. Taunting me. Vexing me. Daring me to write something meaningful. My wife just came into the office to see if I needed anything. She read the title from over my shoulder and asked, “Don’t you mean the photo you regret NOT taking?”

It’s a valid question. After all, in a world where I at least have my iPhone with me all the time, there is always a camera at hand. It may not always be a perfect shot, but I shouldn’t have too many regrets about photos not taken. “No, the title is right. It’s about the photo I regret taking.”

“This should be interesting,” she said, pulling up a chair. “Tell me about it.”

This is a very interesting story (but ignore the comment section). Like many of us, I’ve regretted not taking many photos but I’ve luckily never been in a situation where I regretted actually taking one.

What are your thoughts on this story? Is the photographer correct in “beating himself up” over the photo? Have you ever taken a shot you regretted later?

My goal for the image was to create one that would reflect what could have been that day at the racetrack if only the weather gods would have allowed it.

There’s so much amazing work going on with this image and it requires an incredible amount of skill but, I keep coming back to the fact that it’s a little scary that he can “manipulate reality” so well.

On Saturday, we went down to False Creek to watch the “Dragon Boat Festival” – which turned out to be all kinds of lame and not anything like what I remember it from my last time in Vancouver. Very disappointing. Sadly, I didn’t get any decent shots of the actual boats or paddlers.

I did get some lovely shots (if I do say so myself) of one of the bands that played (in particular, as you can see, the trombonist) and a few of the gorgeous belly dancers.

Sunday was spent at the “Scandinavian Midsummer Festival” – I always thought “Scandinavia” comprised only Norway, Finland and Sweden. But Iceland and Denmark join that party, too. Ate Danish food (yummy), talked to Vikings and watched “wife carrying”. That’s a good day in anyone’s book. 🙂

You may have seen the photos I posted from the Bloedel Conservatory. I went with my friend Lesley who is not a photographer. She takes pics solely with her iPhone. I brought along my usual gear – my Nikon D600 with the 24-85mm f3.5-4.5 lens and the Olympus OM-D E-M1 with a 75-300mm f4.8-6.7 lens on it for her. I set the camera to Macro mode and showed her how to switch it to Auto if she wanted to. After five minutes of instruction, I turned her loose.

As expected, she took a lot of bad pictures. 🙂 But, once she got comfortable with the camera and with minimal further instruction from me, she took some wonderful pictures!

To be fair, some of the shots above may seem “soft”. I think that’s because the camera was shooting JPGs (I wasn’t sure how many pics she’d take so I wanted to save on file size) but even with that, the combination of the beautiful birds, her eye and the amazing EM-1 camera, she took some really good pics!

The story, in case you need a refresher, is the one that involved an anonymous UK photographer and the police officer who threatened to make his life “a living hell” for photographing the scene of a crash from a safe distance away in a public space. The officer claimed that only press were allowed to take photos at a ‘crime scene,’ which is not the case, and seized his camera as evidence.

This is something we spend a little time on in my “Tips & Tricks” class – what are your rights as a photographer and what you can and can’t photograph.